http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
TED Kennedy has more pals among prospective Bush appointees than you might
expect. Thomas Scully, slated to head the Health Care Financing
Administration, made $1,000 campaign contributions to both Ted Kennedy and Al
Gore in 1999, National Review Online reported March 12. Scully also gave Bush
$1,000 and another grand last year. But the man who would handle Medicare
financing for the new administration can be stingy with Republicans. In 1996,
Scully gave $1,000 to Bill Clinton, but only $500 to Bob Dole got only $500.
That's what the Democrats call bipartisanship.

Now it turns out that Ted Kennedy and other prominent Democrats have received
sizable donations from another prospective White House official: MIT
president Charles Vest, who has reportedly been under "serious consideration"
to serve as White House science adviser. Publicly Vest has suggested he's not
interested, which from a prospective political appointee is usually a coy way
of saying he is interested.

Nobody can accuse Vest of trying to buy the job. In 1999, Vest donated $500
to Sen. Ted Kennedy and $250 to Rep. Joe Moakley, according to Federal
Election Commission records reviewed by TAS. He also gave $250 in 1997 to
Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat who recently declared that Vest
would be a "good choice" for science adviser.

Vest's only listed donation to Republicans is $500 in 1998 to Michigan Rep.
Vernon Ehlers, then and now a member of House Science Committee. Quite adept
at convincing Congress to cough up huge sums for scientific research (some
$250 million annually just to MIT), Vest has obvious reason to stay cozy with
this particular Republican.

Vest's other beneficiaries aren't members of the House Science Committee,
however. Nor does Sen. Kennedy serve on any Senate committee directly related
to science, according to his web site. Yet Vest last year bestowed upon
Kennedy the MIT "Champion of Science" award for "promoting scientific
research" -- i.e., bringing home the bacon.

Compared to his other endeavors, Vest's bankrolling the Democratic liberal
elite is small stuff. Far more problematic has been his willingness to make
common cause with feminists. As White House Science adviser -- or head of the
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy -- Vest would establish
research priorities for the National Science Foundation and other federal
departments, according to the Boston Globe. If his nearly decade-long tenure
at MIT is any indication, Vest would likely make "Gender Equity" a key
priority.

At MIT Vest cleared a path for feminists determined to reap innumerable
benefits from dubious charges of gender discrimination. The campaign for "pay
equity" and other liberal goodies reached its crescendo in March 1999 with
the release of the "MIT Study on the Status of Women." Based on "data" MIT
refused to release, the report declared the university guilty of
institutional -- albeit subconscious or unintentional -- discrimination
against women faculty. According to the conservative Independent Women's
Forum, the raw data was actually evaluated by one of the faculty members who
claimed gender discrimination. Nonetheless, the much ballyhooed report became
the focal point of the effort at MIT and nationwide to further subsume
science to gender equity dictates. That evidently pleased Vest, who urged
colleagues to act upon the MIT report "personally and collectively."

Just weeks after his name surfaced as a possible White House official, Vest
and eight other leaders of prestigious universities issued a statement vowing
to eliminate the "barriers" -- that means you, white males -- which "still
exist to the full participation of women in science and engineering." Top
officials from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and UC-Berkeley,
along with the presidents of the University of Michigan, Princeton, Stanford,
and Yale, vowed to fight within their respective institutions for social
justice. With Vest, the apparent ringleader, they vowed to enlist "senior
women faculty" to monitor pay data to insure pay "equity" -- most likely
comparable worth -- for women professors.

Why does Vest carry water for feminists? Is he easily mau-maued or cajoled by
shrill interest groups? Or inclined to allow advocates to twist research for
political ends? Either way these are not particularly auspicious credentials
for a science adviser.

Moreover, if Vest caves to feminists so readily he could prove even more
vulnerable to National Missile Defense opponents, such as the unrepentant
naysayers among the left-leaning Union of Concerned Scientists. His own paper
trail sheds little light. But Vest associates and a TAS source in the
scientific community speculate that Vest hoes to the UCS line. MIT is
certainly a hotbed of anti-NMD sentiment. All this is no small matter of
concern, given that the White House Science adviser can help shape missile
defense policy.

With the post still vacant, the White House might do well to take a closer
look at another prospective nominee. North Carolina State University
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox, whose name surfaced with Vest's, also made a
political donation last year. But according to FEC records, the $1,000 she
gave last year went exclusively to the Republican National Committee.

Fox has ties to the new administration besides her purse strings. She has
traversed
the Bush orbit for years. In 1991, President George Bush named her to the
governing
board of the National Science Foundation, a federal agency long beset by
political
correctness. During her five-year term, the NSF even sponsored summer
programs
only for "under-represented minorities." The credo was enforced with all
the
determination and subtlety of George Wallace outside the school house door.
When a
white high school girl applied to "Planet Earth," the NSF-sponsored
environmental
summer camp declared in no uncertain terms that as an "Anglo-American" the
girl did
not "not meet the stated criteria for participation." Talk about
environmental racism.
But Fox , who served as vice president for research at the University of
Texas at Austin
from 1994-1997 when George W. Bush was governor, hardly seems animated by
such
grotesque quota-mongering. Her public record gives no indication she is
determined
to make math and science research a feminist playground.

She has, however, bemoaned the under-representation of women scientists.
Still, Fox
mostly blames the dearth of female role models rather than discrimination
for the
problem. In short, she's not quite Christina Hoff Sommers. But there's
no indication
she is Gloria Steinem in a white coat. Or, for that matter, Charles Vest in
drag.

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